


I Wouldn't Hate A Romance With You

by Pinkist



Series: Daminette One-Shots [2]
Category: DCU (Comics), Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, F/M, Fluff, Mentioned Cassandra Cain, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 04:08:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21068588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pinkist/pseuds/Pinkist
Summary: Some things are easier to confess to two years olds. (Unfortunately, they never stay two forever, in fact, sometimes they only stay two for six hours and then wake up remembering everything you said.)





	I Wouldn't Hate A Romance With You

She hadn’t let go of his shirt since he picked her up half an hour, and at this point, he’s convinced she’ll keep it in her clutches until it eventually melts into her flesh and becomes one with her. Still, he’d gladly let her keep it as long is it kept her from crying. Again.

It was his fault, and Damian knew it, but he certainly wasn’t looking forward to explaining it all to Grayson. He considered keeping it–her a secret, but when she started teething on his sleeves, drooling freely all over his designer jacket, he knew he needed help. If he were honest he was desperate enough to accept assistance from anyone. Except Drake. (Todd wasn’t exactly an exciting candidate either, but Damian knew well enough that he was lacking in options.

Damian was lucky (or unlucky?) enough that the first bat he encountered was not one of his brothers. 

Brown jumped back as soon as she saw the toddler in his arms, staring at him with wide eyes, mouth agape. “What is that?”

Damian cleared his throat. She was hardly the worst person to encounter, but asking for her help… Every moment he’d called her ‘Fatgirl’ in the past seemed to jeer at his current self. All the hot wind he’d blown so cooly about being superior to her (which, he really was), and all the criticisms he’d hashed out. His pride was about to suffer. “It’s Ladybug.”

Silence followed his admission, heavy and awkward and made him feel like he was breathing in hot fog. 

Her brows furrowed, and he could see the gears shifting in her head. “Ladybug, as in the teen hero Ladybug? The one who’s definitely not…” She paused to examine the child carefully, pinching its cheeks with a small coo. Marinette didn’t seem to like it, blubbering hotly in response. “The one who’s not two, or– or three? The one who’s–”

“I don’t need you to tell me who Ladybug is, Brown (“no names on the field!), I know exactly who she is. She was hit by some sort of de-aging ray. We apprehended the villain, but I’ve yet to locate a cure.”

“How long have you been looking?”

“Approximately thirty minutes.”

Brown smirked, tugging on the ends of her purple Batgirl cape, clearly delighted by his misfortune. “Half an hour? And you haven’t phoned a friend for help? Daddy bats isn’t gonna be happy, huh?”

Damian wrinkled his nose, readjusting his grip on Marinette as she mumbled by his ear. “For your information, Father is in Brazil.”

“I was talking about Nightwing, Robin.”

Damian humphed. 

Marinette began to wriggle in his grasp, pushing against his arms in an attempt to be set down. His grip on her tightened. There was no way he’d be letting a toddler out on Gotham’s roofs, especially not Marinette.

His struggle seemed to elicit some pity from the blonde Batgirl, as she pat his arm warmly. “Take her to my apartment, Rob, I’ll get Cass (“no names on the field.”) and we’ll look for a cure or something. If you’re lucky Signal or Bluebird might swing over and you can beg them to give you a hand.”

“We were at an alley in Grand Avenue. Across Dell’s Diner,” he told her. She repeated it under her breath, eyes focused as she tried to remember the place. When her blue eyes lit up, he knew he could trust her. He’d have to anyway. There was no way he could keep following empty trails with Marinette squirming in his hold.

Damian nodded his head in thanks, but it didn’t seem to be enough for Stephanie who swiped at his nose with her pointer finger. “What’s the magic words, Robin?”

He looked away from her, eyes sweeping across the dark clouds that kissed the rooftops of Gotham. “Thank you.”

She pat his head, an action he normally would have thrown a fit over, and leaped off the building, grappling across the city. 

Damian turned down to look at Marinette who’s large, round eyes were focused on his face. “Tami!” She squealed.

He rolled his eyes at her, though his look was considerably softened by the pure joy in her face. “Say it with a ‘D,’ Marinette. Dami-an.” He cursed himself internally at having almost forgotten the second half of his own name because of the baby in his arms. He wasn’t going to start giving himself nicknames just because she couldn’t speak well currently.

His mother raised him to improve himself, hardly ever making an easy route for him. He grew up strong. He would do the same with Marinette for however long she was young. (Not because he wanted her to grow up strong too, he insisted to the voice in his head that said so. It was because he couldn’t handle weakness. Nothing more to it.)

“Tami!”

He huffed out a breath and swung to Brown’s apartment.

It was cleaner than he expected, barer too, but Brown’s bed had enough pillows to make it a safe place for him to put down Marinette. His left arm was a little sore from having to bear her weight for such a long time, but he didn’t have the energy to massage it, slumping down beside the crawling toddler. 

Young Marinette seemed to love food as much as her older self, but wasn’t quite yet able to discern what was and wasn’t edible. As soon as he’d placed her down she’d grabbed a pillow and promptly shoved it in her mouth, chewing at it lightly. 

“Take that out of your mouth at once!” He ordered, glaring at the child who did nothing to heed his words, simply blinking her bluebell eyes at him innocently. “Take it out!”

When she failed to move, he yanked it from her, setting it back down at the edge of the bed. Satisfied, he moved to sit back down only to notice her watering eyes and trembling lips. She was about to cry again.

“Please stop.”

“Waaahhhh!”

Damian groaned, walking past the toddler and to the fridge. Surely Brown had something kid-safe enough to feed the little cretin. Maybe if she had something in her mouth she’d be quiet. 

Brown’s fridge was full of packaged easy-make food and a sad bunch of bananas that he suspected a friend (surely not Drake as he lived on coffee alone) bought for her.

He took the bananas out, silently wondering why she refrigerated them (had Brown never seen Bananas before? Didn’t she know they were fine in the pantry or on the table? Had Pennyworth not bothered to teach her?), borrowing a spoon from a kitchen drawer, mashing the fruit dutifully. 

Marinette stopped crying as soon as she saw the spoon and bowl, eyes stuck on it, as if hypnotised. She opened her mouth before he even asked, letting him feed her without complaint. “Sorry,” he said, wiping the sides of her mouth, “you must have been hungry. Still, that pillow is for resting, not food. Understand?”

Marinette nodded her head well and truly ashamed, and Damian returned to feeding her. Young Marinette was a lot more reserved than her older self. While Ladybug’s company was sometimes appreciated, more often than not their argumentative natures would spark feuds that lasted for weeks. This young Marinette, with chubby cheeks and a tiny mouth intent only on eating, would probably not be fighting with him every other day or so. 

“It’s not very heroic of me to ask this, but you wouldn’t mind staying this way for a while longer would you? Your older self gives me headaches.”

“Ouch. Hea_t_aches hurt.” 

“Are ‘D’s’ that hard to say?”

“T?”

Damian snorted, swirling the silver spoon around the bland, yellow mash. “Sure, T.”

She ate the rest of the meal in relative silence, and by the time she was finished, Damian was starting to feel a little too comfortable talking to a toddler.

“We were really good friends once, you know?”

Interested, young Marinette crawled forward, placing her hands on his folded knees. “Who?”

“Your older self,” he said, not clarifying when she looked at him with bewilderment. “We were pretty good friends. I thought telling her I was Robin would let us be closer, I’d know she was Ladybug for a while by then. I suppose saving lives is divisive work because it drove us apart in the end. Too many disagreements.” 

Young Marinette raised her brows, sucking on the banana remnants on the spoon. “You look sa_t_?”

Damian breathed in heavily, forcing a small smile on his face, forgetting any ideas about harshness and strength. This child would grow to be someone important to him. His mother helped him to grow up strong, but for the time he had Marinette as a child, he would help her grow up loved. “I think I miss her.”

Young Marinette yawned, effectively shattering the strange melancholy mood that had settled. Children were lucky that they couldn’t read the room yet. Ignorance was bliss, he supposed. “I guess I must be boring enough to put you to sleep,” he commented, nudging her to the center of the bed as she surrendered to the comfort of a full stomach and a lulling voice. Her older self was certainly the type to hurt herself rolling out of bed, and he’d hate for young Marinette to fall off and hurt herself.

“Take all the sleep you need,” he told her, and she seemed keen on listening to him for once. “Your older self barely sleeps these days, I think she’s competing with Drake on who can stay awake the longest. Sometimes I wish I could force her to go to bed.”

“An unstructured sleep-schedule isn’t conducive to her night job,” he added as if he needed to convince himself that his concern wasn’t completely selfless. Because it wasn’t. Ladybug was known to work with Robin, and really it’d reflect badly on him if she were to fall asleep on duty or something equally ridiculous. 

He brushed the short strands of navy hair away from the toddler’s face, capturing the moment in his mind. He had no excuse for that one. 

He didn’t like her, truly. She was argumentative and reckless, almost irrational at times with the most bizarre leaps in logic that made the most convoluted of plans (how they worked, he had no clue. It must have been a miracle of sorts.) And she was always angry, and passionate, and kind. 

There was a part of him that disliked her. Resentment that grew from disbelief and fear at how easy she made it for him to trust her. To appreciate her judgment and her presence. To feel guilty each time they argued. 

Damian wasn’t exactly sure what kind of person he was, but he would never call himself kind. Not when a word like that far better described the likes of Grayson, or Cain, or Thomas. 

Without his notice, his legs had unfurled, and his position had switched from sitting to lying beside the sleeping child. 

He let his eyes flutter shut.

His first thought when he woke up the next morning was that someone had forgotten to close the blinds. Light streamed through the curtains, illuminating his closed lids a faint orange-toned gray as the early morning sun rose. His arm around Marinette hadn’t moved at all last night, so he was sure she hadn’t slipped off Brown’s bed, only he noticed that the expanse of his palm no longer covered most of her back.

His eyes snapped open the same time as hers, and the two jumped away from each other, alarmed and just a little confused. Marinette had reverted back sometime during the night, and without his notice either. She didn’t look too surprised to be in Brown’s apartment, so she must spend an awful lot of time there.

That, or she remembered her time as a child. Based on the way her eyes scanned the room, stopping at the banana bowl, he guessed the latter was correct. 

“Well this is awkward,” she said, scratching the back of her head. Her arms seemed to stumble for something to do, finally resting on the bed-sheets and blanket.  
  
She was folding it rather meticulously he noticed. She must be pretty stressed.

“Do you remember anything?” He asked, a mix of curious and concerned.

She let out a stilted laugh that was breathy in quality. “Uh yeah actually. I um. _Iremembereverything!”_

As if saying it quickly would stop him from understanding. Damian had long since grown fluent in Marinette speak, and any stuttering or mumbling or weirdly voiced exclamations she let out, he was sure he would understand. 

That didn’t bode so well for him. 

Nerves hit him fast and hard like a speeding train had rammed straight in his chest. “Oh?” His stomach numbed and hurt at once, and he wondered if it was an appropriate time to stop the conversation to vomit. 

“Yeah, um. I didn’t get what you were saying at the time, but I do remember it. I guess I get it now.”

As it always did for him, panic turned into shame that boiled into a hot fury, and he had to hold his breath to stop himself from erupting like a volcano. “Whatever you’re remembering is probably wrong. I hardly doubt your brain is capable of forming a coherent thought as an adolescent anyway, let alone an infant.”

“I miss you too Damian.”

The magma of his wounded pride dissipated into steam. He didn’t have the confidence to say anything in response, or look her in the eye, so he simply folded his arms and looked to the side with a huff. 

He had heard her walk closer, but he hadn’t expected her to place a hand on his chin, forcing him to look straight at her. “I said_ I miss you too Damia_n.”

Her thin arms wound their way around him, and he melted a little at her touch. “Are you going to hug me back?” Her voice was muffled by his crumpled, drool-stained jacket, but he understood her well enough. Gladly, he complied, holding her in a welcome embrace.

It didn’t last long, he wasn’t the most comfortable with touch and she knew it.

“You don’t really act like you miss me.” He was being childish and he knew it, but he wanted to know why. Why she acted like she was always mad at him, and why they never talked anymore unless they were fighting. 

She laughed, surprising him. “I miss you. I guess I just get frustrated with you because I have all these expectations. In a way I guess I was mad at myself.”

He turned his head slightly to look at her. Examining the twitches of her lips and the small dimple that formed on her left cheek each time she grinned. “Mad at you for being so bad at taking care of yourself (he grunted at that one, hardly believing that little miss never-sleeps was saying that to him), and mad at myself for not being able to squash my feelings for you. It’s easier to push you away than get too attached and hurt myself. I guess I get mad at you because you can be real annyoing, but you already know that.”

“Feelings?” Damian questioned. His heart picked up in pace, going from a canter to a gallop and he was sure that if she said something akin to loathing he wouldn’t be able to handle the second train that would undoubtedly plummet him after. 

Marinette let out a burst of full-bellied laughter. The tinkling bells tickled his ears, and though he usually liked making her laugh until she snorted, he didn’t exactly enjoy being laughed at. “Damian for someone so perceptive you’re so dense.” She held his face in her hands, letting go of the blanket completely so that she could have his full attention.

“I’m only going to say this once, okay?”

He did his best to nod without displacing her touch. Her soft fingers left tingling sensations on his skin that had his cheeks burning and his lungs constricting. 

“Damian, I like you.”

“I like you too.”

She shook her head, letting go of his cheeks to finish setting Brown’s bed. He couldn’t help the disappointment that shot through him when her warm touch left, leaving cool wind in its place. “I mean that I like you _romantically_.”

Oh. Romantically. It was a little gruesome, but recently any fantasies of his future involved his own dead body crushed at a tragically young age. With the kind of lifestyle he lead, it couldn’t be helped. He hadn’t even considered romance, so absorbed in being Robin and fighting for justice that it seemed like such an irrelevant concept.

Only now Marinette wanted romance, and he was sure he felt something for her, but he wasn’t the romantic type. He was the type to yell at people when they beat him at Cheese Viking, and to push Todd off a rood when he was being irritating. He couldn’t romance.

“Relax, Damian. I can see you panicking–”

“You’re not even looking at me–”

“I can _feel_ you panicking. I didn’t tell you that because I expected a response. I just wanted to get it off my chest so that maybe we could be friends again. We really don’t need to be anything more.”

The words slipped from his mouth before he could overthink and regret them. “What if I want to be more?”

Marinette turned away from the bed, the pillow she was fluffing slipped from her fingers as she turned to stare at Damian, completely shocked. “Seriously?”

Damian had no answer to that, feeling just as shocked as Marinette looked. “Well, I wouldn’t hate a romance with you.” Which was true, he really wouldn’t. As uncomfortable as it might make him in the beginning, he was sure he would enjoy her company. 

Marinette’s face fell, and Damian had an inkling he said something completely wrong. 

“Thanks, Damian, but uh. I don’t really think that’s a qualifier for wanting something more. I mean I wouldn’t hate a romance with Tim, but–”

Damian’s back straightened stiff. “_Drake_? You have feelings for Drake?” Suddenly, the thought of offing his older brother looked far more appealing than it did on normal days.

“No!” Marinette protested face screwed to look aghast. “I don’t have feelings for Tim. Nothing other than general appreciation I guess.”

Damian fumed. He appreciated Marinette completely, how she smiled, and how she thought on her feet, and here she was saying she liked him romantically but admitting she appreciated Drake too?

“So you like me and Drake.”

“I just said I don’t like Tim, Damian.”

“Well clearly you do, you just said you appreciate him.”

“In a general sense!” Marinette pursed her lips, wiping the sides of her face with her hands until they cupped her cheeks. They looked so nice Damian almost wanted to place his hands atop hers. “Damian, what do you think I mean when I say I appreciate Tim?”

Damian considered the question but tapped his foot impatiently. Now she wanted to rub it in his face or something. Maybe he should have pursued the romance with her after all. “Well I appreciate you,” he said. “So I recognise your worth wholly. Your mind, body, personality, and wellbeing are all incredibly valuable to me. Surely you know the meaning of appreciate?”

Marinette was glowing in a way he hadn’t seen her do before. If he was from further away he would have confused her for a star. “Why are you smiling at me like that?”

“Damian you’re so stupid.”

“I resent that.”

“So you don’t hate the idea of a romance with me right?”

He nodded his head in confirmation, unsure of where she was leading their conversation.

“Would you say you like it?”

Would he? Well, they were probably going to have a tragic romance, one worse than Grayson and Gordon. Not like Grayson and Kory though, he’d never in his life be lured by infidelity, especially not when there wasn’t a person who could compete with Marinette. But besides the tragic ending, he might like spending the extra time with her. “I suppose,” he said. With more thought, he figured he might still enjoy it even with the tragic ending. Time with her was better than none at all.

“Well do you like the idea of me kissing you?”

Her lips were parted, inviting. Kissing was a romantic thing, and he’d learned enough from Grayson to know that it was really important to people. And if she wanted to do something like that with him then… “I wouldn’t mind.”

Her lips were as supple as they looked, pressing gently against his own. It was chaste and hardly heavy-handed enough to leave any taste of her on his lips, but the sensation lingered and filled him with a warmth he never knew. 

Oh. _So this was what she meant when she called him stupid._ There was no denying it now, that the pain in his stomach was undoubtedly those wretched butterflies Grayson had warned him about, and he really did like her. A lot. 

“What if I want more?” He repeated, this time quieter, gentler, and surer.

Marinette looked him in the eyes, searching for any uncertainty. “Are you sure?”

“Well, I suppose I’d need another kiss to make up my mind.”

Marinette shoved him back by the shoulders, passing by him to wash the banana bowl in the sink. “This is what I meant when I said you were annoying!” She sang. There was no sting to her words, and even from behind, Damian could spot her bright red ears. 

In his pocket, his phone buzzed.

6:29am  
**Brown:**  
Hope ur awake. LB reverted back in the middle of the night, no cure necessary. Slept at Cas’ cos u looked tired. 

6:30am  
**Brown:**  
Hey maybe u can confess or smth

6:30am  
**Brown: **  
Confess u like her i mean

6:30am  
**Brown:**  
Wait cass said u didnt know how u felt yet so ignore the last text lol

6:31am  
**Me:**  
A bit late. 

“What do you want for breakfast?” Marinette asked, rifling through Brown’s drawers. 

Damian took her hand in his, entwining their fingers. A trill rushed through him at the action, and he did his best to keep his cool, barely noticing how flustered Marinette had gotten too.

“Brown doesn’t exactly have a choice selection. The pancake mix wouldn’t be awful, however.”

They spent the rest of the morning squabbling as they usually did, though the usual heat was absent, and Damian thought that if the rest of his life was spent this way, well, he didn’t hate the idea of it.

**Author's Note:**

> Abrupt ending RIP
> 
> if u have $3 to spare; https://ko-fi.com/doorbelle


End file.
